


Valar Morghulis

by redcandle17



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - Martin
Genre: ASoIaF, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-14
Updated: 2009-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Stark crosses a few names off her death list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valar Morghulis

_She was not no one. She was Arya of House Stark. The man she'd been sent to kill was still asleep; she'd crept into his bed chamber too quietly to wake him. They'd told her at the temple that he was a wicked man, that he'd done awful things to a rival merchant's daughter. But Arya hadn't seen him do anything wicked. He hadn't hurt her or anyone she loved. She couldn't kill him. _

She shouldn't be here. The ones who'd hurt her were across the Narrow Sea in Westeros. They were the ones she needed to killed. And she would.

Sansa was probably dead. The Lannisters were still offering a reward for her head so they must not have caught her but Sansa had never been very good at hiding so it probably just meant that she'd died.

_It was easy to find Sansa when they played 'seek me' because she always hid in the same places, places that were easy to find. Arya told her about better places to hide, like in the hayloft above the stables or down in the cellar below the kitchen. But the stables were too dirty for Sansa and the cellar was too scary. Arya always found her in their lady mother's bath or in the glass gardens._

Jon was still alive though. She'd heard the talk in Maidenpool as soon as she'd stepped off the ship. Ned Stark's bastard was lord commander of the Night's Watch and he was sending ravens spreading tales of Others but it was just a trick to get more men to go fight for Stannis Baratheon.

_Jon loved her even if no one else did. He let her curl up in his lap and cry on his new tunic. Stupid Jeyne Poole had said that Arya cheated and Sansa had taken her side and Septa Mordane had yelled at her for yelling at them. Septa Mordane was mean and Arya had only told her the truth, but Mother and Father had scolded her and said she couldn't call the septa a mean old woman even if she was one. They all hated her. Jon mussed her hair and Arya felt a little better. She started to tell him her plan to run away. Jon would go with her, of course._

Arya wasn't entirely alone; she had one brother left. But Jon wasn't a Stark. Arya was the only Stark left. It was up to her to take revenge on the Lannisters and the Freys and everyone else who'd destroyed her family. She'd heard it said that the Lannisters always paid their debts. Well, Arya did too and she was going to repay all her debts before she went home north to Jon.

She remembered each and every person she owed the gift of the Many Faced God. Arya had recited their names every night, turning it into her personal prayer over the years. She had to kill Raff the Sweetling for killing Lommy Greenhands, and Dunsen for stealing Gendry's horned helm. Ser Ilyn had to die for killing her father, and Queen Cersei for giving him the order. She would kill Ser Meryn for killing Syrio Forel and she would have killed Ser Gregor too if he hadn't died before she'd returned to Westeros. She owed many more debts, but the Freys of the Crossing were numerous and she didn't know their names. It didn't matter. She knew how to look and how to listen and she'd find them.

_She hadn't dreamt this dream in a long time. She was a wolf again, not a cat. And she wasn't alone. There were other wolves, dozens of them, but she was the biggest and they followed her lead. Four-legged prey was scarce, but there was plenty of two-legged prey to feast upon. Sometime she found them hanging from the trees, waiting for her, but she didn't like the taste of dead flesh. She left those for the weaker members of the pack. She liked to hunt and tonight she was following the scent of the men and horses that had passed by her lair during the day. _

They were clustered around a big fire when she found them, but she wasn't afraid of fire. She let her smaller brothers and sisters gorge themselves on horse flesh and stalked closer to the men. They were screaming and covering themselves in pieces of metal that she knew would be harder to bite through. She started to lunge at the one nearest to her, but something farther back caught her attention.

Twin castles decorated the tunic of a man cowering on the other side of the fire and the sight of it filled her with rage, made her feel like tearing his flesh with her teeth until there was nothing left of him or that sigil. She moved around the fire, growling, and the man tried to run. She leapt, knocking him to the ground, and then she began to eat.

She had heard that outlaws were hanging the Freys. Lord Beric was a good man, even if he'd broken his promise to reunite her with her mother. It was nice that he was punishing the Freys for what they'd done. But the rumors about the Hound, Arya didn't believe those. Beric wouldn't let the Hound join the Brotherhood without Banners and anyway the Hound wouldn't want to because he hated knights. Besides, he'd been dying of a fever when Arya last saw him.

There was also talk of a woman leading one band of outlaws. Arya wondered if this Lady Stoneheart was anyone she'd known, maybe Lady Smallwood. It would have been wonderful to see her old friends, but she'd found over the past two years that she preferred working alone. She would find them when it was over. Maybe Gendry would have had enough of being an outlaw knight and he'd go to the Wall with her.

It would have been easier to start with the Queen or Lord Frey, but Arya was worried that she'd never find Raff the Sweetling or Dunsen if she waited any longer. It had been such a long time since that village by the God's Eye; she'd forgotten what they looked like. Fortunately Ser Gregor's notoriety remained, though the man himself was years dead, and Arya was able to find out what had become of his men. They were garrisoned outside of Saltpans, helping the local lord hunt for outlaws. That made Arya mad. It was Raff and Dunsen and the others who should be hanged as criminals.

When she finally caught up with them, she discovered that Dunsen had died of the pox half a year ago. Raff was still alive though. She pretended to be a whore and let him lead her into an empty stall in the stables. She stuck Needle in his neck, the way he'd shoved his spear into Lommy Greenhands's throat.

"Valar morghulis," she told him as he gurgled and died.

She saw Shitmouth outside as she was leaving. Arya nodded at him and strolled away. She wouldn't kill him. He wasn't so bad; he'd given her and the other captives extra bread on the road to Harrenhal.

Arya was prepared to kill Ser Ilyn Payne in his tent later that night, but he made things easier for her. He left the camp shortly after dark with a bushy-bearded, one-handed knight. They never saw her behind them.

_"But I'm older than Bran. I'm nine!" _

"No, Arya," her father said sternly. "An execution is no sight for a girl."

It wasn't fair. Arya had always wanted to see Father do justice, but he'd never taken her with him. It was tolerable when he only took Robb and Jon and she was too little, but now he was taking Bran, who was even littler than her.

"It's not fair!"

Lord Eddard only sighed in response. He kissed the top of her head and mounted his horse. Her brothers Robb and Jon and Bran followed him, surrounded by guardsmen in the grey and white of House Stark.

"It's not fair," Arya repeated to herself as she watched them ride out.

When they began to practice their swordplay, Arya decided to wait until they'd tired themselves out. She wanted to chop Ser Ilyn's head off the way he'd chopped off her father's head, but she knew she wasn't strong enough.

Ser Ilyn had dealt the one-handed knight what would have been his third death blow of the night when the one-handed man put an end to it. He walked over to the horses and pulled a wineskin from his saddle. Arya slid Needle beneath Ser Ilyn's breastplate before his friend had finished sating his thirst. Ilyn Payne made an odd sound as he died, and Arya remembered that he didn't have a tongue.

"Valar morghulis," she whispered.

The sound drew the attention of the one-handed man. He recovered from his surprise quickly and came at her with his sword raised. Arya avoided his attack and managed to slip behind him, driving Needle into the back of his throat. He fell facedown and Arya crouched beside him, using his white cloak to wipe Needle clean.

She ought to find Jaime Lannister and kill him too, she thought, as she rummaged through Ser Ilyn's things. He'd murdered Jory and those other Winterfell men. But Jaime's tent was in the middle of the camp and there would be guards. She wasn't willing to risk it when there were still so many names left on her list. She would find Jaime Lannister later.

Arya encountered Emmon Frey purely by chance. If he had been traveling unobtrusively with a few men, she never would have noticed him. But Frey was surrounded by dozens of men, with a banner bearing the Frey twin castles quartered with the Lannister lion. Arya was forced to the side of the road to make way for the lord of Riverrun.

She followed them then, and Frey's men let her, seeing no threat in a skinny young girl and anticipating her presence in their bedrolls that night. Arya listened to them talk, her eyes on their lord, who sat on a big warhorse looking about him nervously. Nervousness was Emmon Frey's natural disposition, she learned. Though he had good cause to be nervous this time. Everyone knew the outlaws were targeting Freys, to say nothing of the danger posed by wolves.

But not even his own safety would deter Emmon from surveying the lands he had been made lord of. One of the men waved an imaginary piece of paper, imitating his lord's favorite way of reminding people who he was. Arya laughed along with the others. This Emmon Frey looked nothing like a proper lord, but that wasn't surprising because he wasn't a proper lord. He was a murdering Frey thief who'd stolen her lord grandfather's castle.

_Arya had never seen a river, much less two of them and a castle in the middle. Mother's talk of Riverrun sounded as fantastic to her as Father's tale of a castle on the top of a mountain above the clouds. Arya wondered if Mother was making it up so she'd sit still and let her comb the knots from her hair. _

"What if the river washes away the castle?"

Mother laughed. "That won't happen. Riverrun has stood for a long time."

"How long? Aren't you scared for your father? I wouldn't want Father to live in a river."

"Riverrun is a thousand years old, Arya. Your grandfather is perfectly safe."

Riverrun sounded nice, Arya decided. She'd like to have her own river. "Ow," she said as Mother untangled a particularly stubborn knot, but she was imagining herself jumping out of her bedchamber window to go swimming whenever she wanted.

They camped in the open that night and Arya wasn't able to get near Emmon Frey. But the next night they stopped at an inn and it was easy to take the place of the maid tasked with bringing his lordship's dinner to his room. Arya preferred to use Needle, but sometimes it wasn't the best tool for the job. She only had a small vial of sweetsleep left and a few drops of the tears of Lys. The sweetsleep was too painless for the likes of a Frey. Arya bustled around adding wood to the fire and straightening the bed while Emmon Frey ate his chicken broth.

Arya washed the bowl herself after she took it back down to the kitchen. She wouldn't want some poor hungry person to eat it and die. By morning she could hear Frey moaning and his men screaming for a maester. Frey's Lannister wife and their awful children were still at Riverrun. It made Arya mad to think of them in the same castle where her mother had played as a little girl. One day she'd get rid of them all.

There were still a lot of Freys left, but Arya needed to kill Ser Meryn and Queen Cersei too and they were in King's Landing. It seemed like unnecessary hardship to go all the way to King's Landing to kill two people and then come all the way back to the western side of the riverlands. Arya chewed her lip as she tried to decide whether it was best to wait until she'd killed all the Freys or to go now.

"Have you heard, Nym?" asked the old farmer whose fire she was sharing tonight.

"Heard what?"

"The Kingslayer's dead. Outlaws killed him."

Arya was momentarily irritated – she'd wanted to kill him – but she was glad he was dead. The outlaws were killing as many Freys as she was and now they'd managed to kill Jaime Lannister too. They couldn't go into the city so they couldn't kill the Queen or Ser Meryn of the Kingsguard though. But she could do that.

After she killed Ser Donnel Haigh, Arya sold his horse and used the money to buy another horse. This horse was old and slow, but no one would look at her askance the way they would have if they'd seen a peasant girl on a destrier. She used the extra money to buy food and another cloak. It was the least Haigh owed her; she remembered seeing him at the wedding where his mother's family had killed her mother and her brother Robb.

It wasn't enough. Long before she reached King's Landing she had to go into inns and pick the pockets of the men-at-arms from the south and the west who still occupied the riverlands. Whenever she felt a twinge of guilt, she reminded herself that the soldiers had most likely stolen those coins from the smallfolk anyway. Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn would have understood, if the Lannisters and Freys hadn't murdered them.

She got a job serving ale at a cheap tavern when she arrived in King's Landing. It was awful; men constantly pinching her arse or pulling her into their laps, but Arya didn't kill them. She was here for Ser Meryn and Queen Cersei. She did her job and during the mornings she skulked around the city, listening and watching. She learned that Ser Meryn favored one particular house on the street of silk. From there it was only a matter of waiting for him after he exited the brothel.

And then there was only Queen Cersei left. After she finished with her, Arya would go back and kill the last of the Freys. She would find Nymeria too, or let Nymeria find her. She _knew_ the direwolf was alive somewhere in the riverlands. They'd find each other and take a ship north to be a pack again with Jon and Ghost.


End file.
